Someone’s got it in for me / They’re planting stories in the press / Whoever it is, I wish they’d cut it out / But when they will, I can only guess

“Idiot Wind” by Bob Dylan (1975)

It speaks volumes about Bob Dylan that he continues to inspire controversy 50 years after his debut album came out in 1962 — a decade in which he revolutionized pop music more than anyone apart from The Beatles and, perhaps, Jimi Hendrix.

Witness Dylan’s recent Rolling Stone interview, in which he dismissed those who have accused him of musical plagiarism as “evil,” “wussies” and much worse. As for those who denounced him as “Judas” in 1965, when he turned from acoustic folk music to rock and “went electric,” the timeless troubadour born Robert Zimmerman suggests his detractors should “rot in hell.”

If that makes him sound like a crusty curmudgeon, so be it. When you almost single-handedly transformed the art of songwriting, as Dylan did decades ago — and when you continue to relentlessly tour and record years after you could have retired and rested on your immense laurels — well, you’re allowed to carry a grudge or two.

Whether this is why the theme of revenge appears more than once on Dylan’s acclaimed new album, “Tempest,” is a matter of speculation. Then again, so is most of his career, which — like his level of inspiration — has surged, ebbed (sometimes for excruciatingly long periods), then surged, ebbed and surged yet again.

Through it all, his influence on musicians young, seasoned and in between has been constant and formidable. Dylan’s latest tour, which includes a Wednesday concert at Valley View Casino Center (formerly the San Diego Sports Arena) will likely draw fans of several generations, just as he has done for decades.

This, after all, is the only Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who has been nominated for a Nobel Prize for literature and performed for the Pope, West Point cadets, civil-rights activists and the crowd-surfing masses at Woodstock ’94. A 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Dylan is also the only musician who, with a single song and pre-video music video — 1965’s visionary “Subterranean Homesick Blues” — created a template for both rap and MTV, as well as inspiring the name of the radical antiwar group the Weathermen.

‘An inspiration to all of us’

“Bob changed songwriting probably more than any songwriter since we’ve been recording songs,” said Kris Kristofferson. who — at 76 — is five year’s Dylan’s senior. “If you look back at all the popular songs of the time before Dylan, they were a different kind of art form. He just lifted the level up to someplace nobody had imagined before.”

Those sentiments are seconded by country-pop vocal star Carrie Underwood, 29, and by former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, 55.

“I’ve been a fan of Dylan’s since I was 13 and he’s been part of my life ever since,” Buck said. “It’s amazing to me that, at a time when most (veteran) rock guys have given up and are doing an ‘oldies’ circuit, he’s still putting out great records like ‘Tempest.’ That just doesn’t happen. It’s an inspiration to all of us to keep doing it.”

“Dylan’s had such a huge impact on music in general,” Underwood agreed. “I grew up on country music and he’s such a great storyteller, and that fits right in, definitely. He’s one in a million.”

Like blues giant B.B. King and bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley, with whom he proudly recorded a duet in 1998, Dylan has both defined and transcended his own mythology. At 71, with his Vincent Price-like mustache and Lash LaRue-inspired Western garb, he has come to embody facets of the earthy American cultural traditions he dramatically helped to expand. Or, as he snarls and sneers on “Pay in Blood,” a standout number from his new “Tempest” album: The more I take, the more I give / The more I die, the more I live.

Over the years, Dylan has created more transcendent songs than seems possible for any mere mortal. In the 1960s alone, he wrote “Masters of War,” “With God on Our Side,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “My Back Pages,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Just Like a Woman,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “Mr. Tambourine Man” and many more.

The 1970s yielded “Forever Young, “Knockin on Heaven’s Door,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” and “Man Gave Names to All the Animals,” followed by 1983’s epic “Blind Willie McTell.” Over the past 15 years, he has added to his many classics with “Not Dark Yet,” the Academy Award-winning “Things Have Changed” and other striking compositions.

There are albums by Dylan — from "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde On Blonde" to "The Basement Tapes," "Blood On The Tracks" and "Time Out of Mind," to name just some examples — that each alone could have ensured him a place in musical history. Sure, he stumbled with other albums, such as "Self Portrait,""Knocked Out Loaded," "Saved" and the almost unlistenable 1989 live outing, "Dylan and the Dead." But each time, at least so far, he would eventually recover his muse and his bearings and soar once again.

The ‘lost years’

As Dylan acknowledged in his 2004 memoir, “Chronicles, Volume One,” he spent a good part of the 1980s artistically adrift. By the time he launched a 1986 world tour here at the San Diego Sports Arena with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers as his backing band, he felt spent and irrelevant. Rock’s most famous troubadour was ready to call it a day.

“Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine,” Dylan writes in “Chronicles.”

“My own songs had become strangers to me. I didn’t have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn’t penetrate the surfaces. It wasn’t my moment of history any more. There was a hollow singing in my heart and I couldn’t wait to retire and fold the tent. One more big payday with Petty and that would be it for me. I was what they called over the hill.”

Fortunately, in 1987, while rehearsing in San Francisco for a string of concert dates with the Grateful Dead, Dylan had an epiphany when he heard a nameless jazz group in a Bay Area bar.

“The singer reminded me of Billy Eckstine,” Dylan recalled in “Chronicles.” “He wasn’t very forceful, but he didn’t have to be; he was relaxed, but he sang with natural power. Suddenly and without warning, it was like the guy had an open window to my soul. It was like he was saying: ‘You should do it this way.’ ... This technique was so elemental, so simple and I’d forgotten. It was like I’d forgotten how to button my own pants. I wondered if I could still do it. I wanted at least a chance to try.”

It might be a stretch to say Dylan was transformed into a jazz artist, but not by much.

Over the past quarter-century, his concerts have found him assuming an increasingly elastic approach to his music. He reinvents his songs, changing their keys and tempos at will, and delivers his lyrics in such unexpected ways that fans sometimes wait until the chorus to determine the exact song at hand. Like no other pop legend who emerged in the 1960s, he thrives on taking nightly liberties with his music, sometimes to extremes, and often to the dismay of misguided listeners seeking a nostalgic stroll down memory lane.

But no matter. Because Dylan’s goal is to avoid complacency, slickness and artistic stasis — the better to maintain his creative muse and, no doubt, his sanity.

As a result, he and his band may be remarkable one night, dull and discordant the next. He can sound inspiring and infuriating, sometimes even during the same song, but never safe or predictable.

True, his nasal singing has become increasingly strained and foggy, a condition surely not helped by decades of heavy smoking. But on a good night, Bob Dylan can take his listeners someplace that is both new and timeless.

He, and they, deserve nothing less.

Timeless troubadour

Bob Dylan has long denied that he brought a poet’s sensibility to rock ’n’ roll.

“I don’t call myself a poet because I don’t like the word,” he said in 1965 interview. “I’m a trapeze artist.”

Indeed, there is a breathtaking — if not acrobatic — quality to how Dylan crafted the dazzling lyrics to his best songs. But many of them read as well on paper as they sound on the records that transform them into poetry in motion. Here are some favorite examples, past and recent, of his work:

“My Back Pages”: Ah, I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.

“Forever Young”: May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong / May you stay forever young.

“Duquesne Whistle”: You old rascal, I know exactly where you’re going / I’ll lead you there myself at the break of day.

“Masters of War”: You might say that I’m young, you might say that I’m unlearned / But there’s one thing I know, though I’m younger than you / Even Jesus would never forgive what you do.

“Mr. Tambourine Man”: Take me for a trip upon your magic swirling ship.

“Ballad of a Thin Man”: Something is happening, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

“Like a Rolling Stone”: When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

“Blowin’ in the Wind”: How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry? / Yes, and how many deaths will it take, ’til he knows that too many people have died?

“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”: I would not feel so all alone / Everybody must get stoned.

“Gotta Serve Somebody”: Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord / But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

“Absolutely Sweet Marie”: To live outside the law, you must be honest.

“It’s Not Dark Yet”: Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb / I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from / Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

“Narrow Road”: It’s a long road, it’s a long and narrow way / If I can’t work up to you, you’ll surely have to work down to me, someday